Golf Lessons for Beginners

Please stand up.  Slide your hips a few inches to your right (‘back’), then slide them to the left (‘forth’).  

Next, still standing, whirl your arms around clockwise so that your torso turns too, then whirl your arms counter-clockwise, again turning your torso.  Which of these torso motions feels more like your golf ‘swing’?  If your answer is that your ‘swing’ feels more like the sliding motion, you’re not alone.  But, predominantly, you want to feel as you do when whirling around.

• See a PERFECT swing      • Multiple camera angles      • Super Slow Motion      • Worth >1000 words

A ‘back’-and-‘forth’ motion is apparent during the golf ‘swing’.  The face-on view of the arms and clubshaft sweeping back then forth creates the illusion that this motion is what should dominate your thinking as you figure out how to hit a golf ball, and try to imagine what it should feel like.  This is a blind alley.  Swail makes the case that the dominant feeling you want to achieve is that you are causing your torso to coil around and uncoil around.   

   
   Swail has two major reasons for being.  The first is to raise ‘around’ to primacy in 
   how you conceive of the body’s motion as it hits a golf ball, and in how you feel 
   hitting the ball.  The second is to point out the grossly different--and non-rhythmical
   --speeds between coiling and then uncoiling the torso (much more later).  

The term ‘around’ flits among many ‘swing’ books, but Swail develops it originally, comprehensively and emphatically.

You may have accumulated through the years a grab-bag of tips, ‘swing’ thoughts, and  bric-a-brac that share no overriding theme.  Their disconnectedness, randomness may be keeping you from creating one file with one unifying title in which to place those that fit.